Love Thy Neighbour

‘That bitch,’ Masha said.

Some people wake up to BBC weather reports, some to Joe Rogan podcasts, others to Radial (Default) or Daybreak or Arpeggio or even Radar — but I’d wake up to a German woman having an orgasm.

A few weeks ago, a dog moved in next door. I say a dog moved, not “people with a dog”, because I’ve never seen my neighbours. But the dog — that I hear constantly. More importantly, our Perchik-the-black-shorthair-domestic-cat hears the dog. Every time, his ears perk up, eyes widen in alarm, and he stares at the closed front door, behind which comes a piercing bark, more like a squeaky cry, as if the dog next door is being experimented on.

Though we weren’t officially introduced, I’ve met the dog several times. It’s rare to encounter an untrained dog in London, where most canine creatures go through obedience classes stricter than those for Russian PhDs. But even those few meetings with the dog next door in the corridor were enough for me to know: this one would be a problem.

Much like a spoiled brat on a Vegas bender with daddy’s credit card is a problem.

I must say here that before I moved in with Perchik — exactly in this order, it was I who had moved in with him — I thought of myself as a dog person.

Even though my parents never got me one, and dogs repeatedly bit me as a kid, it never put me off wanting to get one.

When I was twelve and riding a bike, a Yorkshire Terrier managed to pierce through my skin and stayed attached to my leg for…